Author of St. Michael Poker & Drinking Club and Baxter's Friends
Coffeetown Press will release my novel Baxter’s Friends June 1st. The book is a work of literary fiction told with a strong male voice. The story is edgy at times, but always true to its vision.
I think men will enjoy the book as they identify with the characters, their feelings and their motives. Similarly, I think women will enjoy the book because it will give them insight, sometimes disturbing, into how men think, what motivates men to act, their fears and their follies.
I learned as a young man that the theory “it’s a man’s world” runs wide, but not deep. It is true that men of my generation, and those before me, had easier access to the superficial trappings of the world such as education, wealth, power and success. There is, however, another world that underlies the superficial; it is a world of emotions, relationships, family and friends. In inhabiting this world, I ascribe to Thoreau’s theory, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” Right or wrong, in this nether world men desperately squirm and struggle under the weight of relationships, incessant physical and emotional cravings and insecurities in view the societal strictures of organized religion, monogamy, heterosexuality and expectations of success. I wrote this book to shed a little light on this whole other world. I did not want to go to the grave with my song still in me.
Down Cemetery Road is the much-anticipated prequel to the unforgettable Baxter’s Friends. Ned Randle raises the curtain on the formative years of Billy Bright’s life, revealing a formula for his adult years that is at once both intoxicating and utterly sobering. Down Cemetery Road delves into the disillusionment of adolescence sadly often shot down by mid-life.
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